The Women's Corps: the establishment of women's military services in Britain

Abstract

My thesis is an account of the 'Women's Corps movement': the
efforts to organise women's non-industrial employment, which led to
the establishment of women's military services in Britain during the
First World War. I survey the background to their introduction both
before and during the First World War, and consider the development of
pre-war women's organisations in the context of official thinking
about defence.
The outbreak of war prompted the formation of numerous women's
voluntary organisations, and a number of women worked to extend
women's role, but it was the continuing manpower crisis which, in
1916, persuaded defence ministers and others seriously to consider
forming corps of women to substitute for men in the Army. The
recommendations of both the Manpower Distribution Board and a military
report advocating substitution of women in certain jobs, together with
the desire of senior War Office staff to gain control over women's
voluntary groups working for the Army, combined to secure the
formation early in 1917 of the first of the three women's military
corps, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. This was followed soon after
by the Women's Royal Naval Service and the Women's Royal Air Force,
and I review some of the problems which inevitably accompanied this
innovation, such as the spreading of rumours of immorality in the
corps, and the manner in which a lack of formal status created
difficulties for the women in command.
I examine the decision that the Corps should cease to exist after
the First World War; the attempts during the 1930s to reorganise a
women's corps to work for the armed forces; the formal bestowal of
'military status' upon members of the Auxiliary Territorial Service
and Women's Auxiliary Air Force in 1941, and, finally, with the Army
and Air Force (Women's Services) Act in 1948, the inclusion of women's
services in Britain's peacetime defence organisation.

Type:

Thesis
(Doctoral)

Title:

The Women's Corps: the establishment of women's military services in Britain